Landlord Refusing to Turn On the Heat in Winter

Attorney Answer

Heat is not optional in Connecticut — your landlord is required by statute to supply it, and if he refuses, the law gives you three specific remedies you can use yourself. Every one of them requires you to give notice first. That notice is the step tenants skip, and skipping it forfeits the remedy.

(This inquiry was submitted in Spanish; this page should be served with a Spanish translation.).

The governing law. General Statutes § 47a-7 requires the landlord to make all repairs and do whatever is necessary to put and keep the premises in a fit and habitable condition, and to maintain in good and safe working order all heating facilities supplied or required to be supplied. Heat is an essential service the landlord must provide, and the duty applies whether your tenancy is written or oral.

General Statutes § 47a-13 is the provision with teeth. Where the landlord is required to supply heat and fails to do so for reasons not beyond his control, then — after you give reasonable written or oral notice specifying the breach — you may:

procure reasonable amounts of heat yourself and deduct the actual and reasonable cost from your rent; - procure reasonable substitute housing if the service is not supplied within forty-eight hours (immediately, if the same breach recurs within six months), with rent abating for the period of noncompliance; or - if the failure is wilful, terminate the rental agreement and recover the greater of two months' rent or double your actual damages.

Reasonable attorney's fees are recoverable, which is why a housing lawyer may take a no-heat case without money up front.

If the building is heated on a single meter or a single tank. General Statutes § 16-262e(c) makes the owner, agent, lessor, or manager of a residential building liable for the cost of all electricity, gas, water, or heating fuel furnished to the building, except for service furnished to a dwelling unit on an individually metered or billed basis for the exclusive use of that unit's occupants. Where the service is not individually metered and the landlord fails to pay, an occupant who receives service in his or her own name may deduct a reasonable estimate of the cost attributable to the other units, and under § 16-262e(d) those payments are treated as rent. Section 16-262e(f) bars the landlord from raising your rent to recoup amounts you lawfully deducted.

In Northland Investment Corp. v. Public Utilities Regulatory Authority, 349 Conn. 35 (2024), the Supreme Court held that a landlord of a master-metered multiunit building bears liability for the building's utility costs and may not shift them onto tenants through ratio utility billing, because a tenant may not be made liable for service that is not individually metered for that tenant's exclusive use — and that the section is to be construed liberally to protect tenants. That was a utility-billing appeal, not a heat-shutoff case; the landlord-pays rule is what carries over. If your unit is separately metered in your own name, § 47a-13 rather than § 16-262e is your operative remedy.

What you can do

1. Give notice today, specifying that there is no heat. Put it in writing if you can — a text or email is fine and it time-stamps itself — and keep a copy. Section 47a-13 makes notice a precondition to everything that follows. 2. Write down the exact date and time you gave notice. The forty-eight-hour substitute-housing trigger runs from that moment. 3. Call your town's health or building code enforcement office and ask for an inspection. No heat in an occupied unit in winter is an emergency code condition, and the inspection report becomes your evidence. 4. Photograph a thermometer in the unit with the date visible, several times a day, and keep the photos. 5. Keep every receipt — space heaters, electricity, fuel, a hotel, spoiled food, medical costs if anyone gets sick. 6. If the building is heated on one meter or one fuel tank and the landlord stopped paying, call the utility or the fuel dealer and ask about taking service in your own name, then use the § 16-262e deduction. 7. Do not simply stop paying rent. Use the statutory deduction and abatement routes, or pay rent into escrow through housing court. Unstructured withholding gives the landlord a nonpayment eviction.

⏱ Time limits apply. The forty-eight-hour window in General Statutes § 47a-13 — which unlocks the substitute-housing and rent-abatement remedy — does not begin until you give the notice the statute requires. Whether the shorter, immediate trigger applies instead depends on whether the same breach recurred within the past six months, which turns on your specific history with this landlord.